Dear Eleanor, Thank you for your feedback and we are sorry you felt the need to review us with 2 stars. We note your tenancy ended 16 months ago but you have felt the need to raise this now. Hopefully we can clarify your concerns below... Contract Firstly, we would never force a tenant to sign a tenancy agreement before reading. If the tenancy agreement wasn't ready to be sent to you for whatever reason a draft copy of the exact same covenants would have been sent for you to read if requested. The original/final draft is ofcourse wet signed by each party displaying their full agreement. This has been our process for over 35 years. Your tenancy agreement (and any draft that preceded it) stated the below standard clause (1.13) which clearly states that you (as a tenant) are not fixed to any particular supplier. We can provide a copy of your signed tenancy agreement if you wish to examine your agreement to this arrangement. As a matter of fact on this point, it is neither acceptable practice or legal for landlords or agents to insist you use any particular supplier. As An ARLA (Propertymark ) licensed agent such clauses would never be in our agreements. " 1.13 - At the start of the lease gas and electricity will be provided, or will be in the process of being provided by OVO Gas Ltd and OVO Electricity Ltd ("OVO Energy"). However, this will not prevent the Tenant from changing to a different energy provider if desired. " You mention Connells in your review. We are not Connells and have no relationship with them. Gas connection. File notes of 2020 display that we were in contact with your co-tenant in writing and the end of our exchange with your co-tenant ended, and we quote, “I'd like to take this time to thank you for helping us and working during this unprecedented period” An issue was raised to us about the elongated process experienced to locate a gas supplier. The landlord and M&M were very regretful of this situation. This was a result of quite unprecedented circumstances whereby your landlord had purchased a property from a seller who had acquired it from new. The property had never been let before and you were the first tenant/s. They (the previous owner) had never registered the property for gas supply and although they were receiving gas to their home, they were not receiving bills. Although it is not the responsibility of the agent to engage with suppliers on your behalf (as the contract says we offer a free utilities management service to assist in this regards), our staff diligently assisted to resolve this legacy issue. A point to note here is that the communication setting a deadline for your/your co-tenants demand for resolution arrived at our offices by electronic mail on 25/04/20. As you might remember the country was in its first Coronavirus lockdown at the time with very few smaller companies set up for homeworking. We responded to resolve the issue on 01/05/20. The UK government did not identify the lettings industry as a key worker sector but at M&M we still retained full services (aside from face to face) throughout the 7 week industry closure and further lockdowns. We believe that reflects really dedicated services. It’s a shame you mention Angela in your review as we believe the above displays, she was responsive in extremely difficult circumstances. A time where only emergences were being dealt with, she identified that your issue had dragged on and took the bull by the horns. Angela has since moved from the maintenance department of M&M but the overriding feedback we had for her was positive. Thank you for your kind words relating to our maintenance team as they work extremely hard to ensure all issues are dealt with in the correct time frames. They really do have some difficult jobs at times. We hope this response gives some detail to your review of our cherished local business. If we can assist further, please do contact us at lettings@mandmproperties.co.uk or 01525 371997.

Dear Aaron, We are sorry to hear you felt the need to review our company the way you have. As you can see by the many five-star reviews from tenants, landlords, buyers and sellers we do strive and succeed in delivering very high levels of service on a regular basis. We regret you feel this was not the case for yourselves. When you report a maintenance issue to us via our FixFlo platform you will be aware that we have to have the issue either inspected by a property manager and or then quoted for by one of our reputable contractors if this is required. The quote then has to be approved with your landlord and as you can appreciate this process takes time from start to finish and even sometimes depending on the type of issue second quotes are required. I can see looking at the notes on the system the many issues you raised during your tenancy were all dealt with in a reasonable time frame and you were communicated with throughout the process. Relating your checkout of the property you rented, this was completed fairly in line with your inventory schedule of condition on move into the property. We also completed a pre-checkout with you ahead of your checkout date in order to ensure we outlined any issues that you would need to resolve. There were some cleaning issues of which were pointed out that you should rectify before handing in the keys and agreed to do. There were no other issues raised on your pre-checkout. On your checkout inspection the same cleaning mentioned hadn’t been done and therefore it was agreed with yourself that £150 would be deducted from your deposit to see to the cleaning as you didn’t do this. Of course, we report back to you within a few days of the checkout being completed to ensure the deposit is finalised as soon as it can be for your sake. To add, if you had done what was asked of you then you would not have been penalised. This cost was agreed with you and you have accepted the deduction via the TDS website along with the rent you owed and had the remainder of your deposit returned. The TDS outline the timeframe in which your landlord has to notify of any deductions once you request the deposit back and your deposit was actually returned sooner than the TDS advisory date. The proof of the cleaning being done has been sent to you and as you were told when you chased the invoice before that our contractors invoice us at certain dates in each month and therefore, we can only send the invoice to you once we receive it. To summarise, you have alluded to our company and staff as being liars and have also suggested in your comments that money withheld from your deposit (at fault of yourselves) has not been used to conduct the necessary cleaning that was agreed. Your accusation of fraud is very serious and we have notified our legal department of your comment. We of course refute your comment as proven above your deposit deduction of £150 was paid to Pineapple Cleaning. As an ARLA Licenced agent (Association of Residential Letting gents) we voluntarily ensure we follow the extremely high standards ARLA set for their members which in turn ensures an excellent service to our clients and customers. We have four established ARLA agents in our showroom who between them have over 100 years of experience in property management and continue to ensure M&M Properties set the standard in the Leighton Buzzard market and build on our position in the market by word of mouth recommendations. We wish you all the best in your new home and should you wish to contact us about this in any further detail please do get in touch at lettings@mandmproperties.co.uk or 01525371997. Regards, M&M Properties Lettings

Dear Mr Sullivan, We note your review of our company, and we regret you felt the need to review our local business is such a way. A business that has been in Leighton Buzzard since 1986 and one of the very few remaining independent small companies. Unfortunately, given the severely high demand for properties in this area and generally across the UK property market, landlords are extremely cautious on which applications are progressed and those that are not. Sadly ,we find ourselves in an era where landlords are leaving the sector, and the result is less properties to let. The majority of Landlords are now covered by rent guarantee and legal protection insurance which does require the tenant to pass through the referencing process, ensuring that a landlords insurance remains valid and they are protected. We as a company also uphold the most stringent referencing criteria and due to the lack of supply this high standard has increased as supply decreases. We understand the frustration you are experiencing with trying to find a rental property and sympathise with this, unfortunately you won’t be the only prospective tenant in a situation where an IVA (Involuntary financial agreement) is restricting them. With an outstanding IVA, it is a failure of the referencing process which does mean that unfortunately very few of our clients would be able to accept an application from yourself as it leaves them unprotected with their insurance. A guarantor does not necessarily mean you will pass the reference checks either, as factors surrounding your IVA like how much it’s for, when it began and how long it has left to run will have an effect. I was pleased to see that you mention our colleague was very sympathetic which is great to hear, as we do not like turning away applicants, but we must be as clear and transparent as possible with the processes involved with letting a property. The last thing we would want to do is offer false hope or waste anyone’s time. I would also point out that many rental agents and property managers, in this era of low supply and high demand, are processing tenant enquiries by email only. We still believe in the human touch but of course this sometimes means we receive reviews like yours, that’s a shame. I do feel your email is more aimed at general referencing policies, the UK market and PRS as whole as opposed to just your recent interaction as it sounds as though you are having the same issue elsewhere. Hopefully, you will have success imminently. As I have mentioned, we regret not being able to help you for the reasons above but wish you well with your search for a rental property. M&M Properties

Dear Jorge, sorry you felt the need to review us with one star without any context. Unfortunately, we are unable to help with your rating as we are not aware of your name nor a reason you would review us in such a way. Maybe you have confused us with another company? Please do get in touch so we can understand your relationship to our business as at this point, we cannot see any contact between you and us. Sales 01525377733 or Lettings 01525371997. Regards, M&M LB.

Dear Jorge, sorry you felt the need to review us with one star without any context. Unfortunately, we are unable to help with your rating as we are not aware of your name nor a reason you would review us in such a way. Maybe you have confused us with another company? Please do get in touch so we can understand your relationship to our business as at this point, we cannot see any contact between you and us. Sales 01525377733 or Lettings 01525371997. Regards, M&M LB.

Dear Mr Razak, We are sorry to read you review some 3+ years after we ceased managing your property. We regret that giving you a vastly reduced management fee for many years and then reducing our termination costs was not enough to satisfy you. This was a property we managed for the previous client for some 11 years without complaint. We note no complaints were made by you regarding our service to you over the years. We pride ourselves on 38 years of being Leighton Buzzards premier letting agent with 17 fully trained staff, 4 ARLA (Propertymark) licensed staff who have over 100 years combined experience, 24/7 reporting system for clients, processing over 1.5 million pounds of rental transactions monthly, servicing over 2000 clients (landlords/tenants) and being a truly independent company firmly rooted in the history of our town. We are sorry our fees did not suit your investment model however, we value our service and expertise very highly and as such wish you every success with the agents you choose to employ in future.

Dear Diogo & Vanessa, We were sorry to read this review but feel compelled to exercise our right of reply. In doing this, we will reply to your separate one star reviews as one of the same. As stated previously, we do believe we have spoken with you when you sent one of three enquiries on 22/07, 23/07 and 24/07 about the same properties. We emailed you on the 26/07 after your review to inform you that you had been spoken to previously, of which you didn’t reply for six days. I note that we have not had a response from our email to you dated 01/08 asking you to call us to discuss arranging potential viewings. Six days in the lettings industry can see a significant change in property availability, meaning there is a good chance that the properties you originally enquired about may not still be available. As a trusted market leading agent, our qualification process with all applicants must be followed. As you can appreciate, we aren’t able to view with every enquiry we get as the situation relating the applicant may not be suitable for the property/landlord client and vice versa. Equally, some tenants may unfortunately not be in the position to pass the reference check criteria and its therefore critical that we establish the facts relating to any prospective tenant before an applicant views a property. This is standard industry practice to minimise disappointment where references fail after the reservation stage. You were asked for the information that we required as you had not provided all the information in your email. Again, very standard industry practice. It is odd that you mention you have been asked the same qualifying questions several times, yet claim we haven’t contacted you. This statement seems to be at odds with the facts. As stated in the email sent to you on 01/08 we are happy to speak with you to obtain all the information we require to the qualifying questions and to see if we have any suitable properties for you to view. Please call the office on 01525 371997 so that we can help. **Discrimination** I must make you aware that we take accusations of discrimination very seriously and strongly refute your accusation which will be referred to our legal team. M&M Properties are licensed by ALRA Propertymark and are the most recommended and renowned agent in the area. We have traded for some 37 years acting on behalf of thousands of landlords, and providing a high standard duty of care to thousands of tenants from a multitude of ethnicities, nationalities, religions and multi-generational families . We find your comments extremely upsetting and aimed to damage small local businesses like ours. The same comments are utterly without foundation, and we would ask you to seriously consider the future of this post or provide us with evidence of what you claim in 14 days. Chris Hollins Lettings Manager

Dear James, we are sorry you felt the need to review M & M Properties by one star. Unfortunately, we have no details of your name on either our lettings or sales systems so are unable to accept your feedback. Should you wish to discuss this please contact our sales or lettings managers on 01252371997 or 01525377733. Thank you.

Dear Jordan, I’m sorry to see that you have felt the need to leave a negative review like this, it is a real challenge for us in an undersupplied rental market to avoid these situations, but I agree with you, we could of done better here. It was myself you spoke to after there was some confusion on which floor the flat was on. This was an error on our software system which was miscommunicated by Daniel and this I explained to you at the time when I called to discuss this and apologise. Our team member, Daniel Chandler, who you had initially dealt with called you on his return to apologise for this error also. We felt this was the right thing to do. I hope you can recognise this act of good faith. Daniel does feel that he was sincere in his conversation with you, but I appreciate you may have still be frustrated at the time. Please accept our apologies again. In regard to the viewing you had booked for Tuesday this week, Daniel did in fact call you on the Saturday before but had to leave a voicemail. This message was to cancel the appointment as there were several others to cancel also. As Daniel hadn’t heard back, he then called again on the Tuesday morning but had to leave a further voicemail and sent a text message. We really did try to warn you on more than one occasion as we knew you would be disappointed about this. We are sorry we could not help you and on two occasions we had to let you down. If you are still searching for a property in Leighton Buzzard, I would be delighted to deal directly with you for your property search. We have so many good properties constantly coming up and I would be more than happy, given what’s gone before, to deal with your search personally. Please do contact me if you are still searching on 01525 371997. Kind Regards Christopher Hollins Lettings Manager 01525371997 or chris.hollins@mandmproperties.co.uk

Dear Giaiel, Thanks for your review. We regret you felt the need to review our services with one star however neither M & M lettings or sales ( Leighton Buzzard) have a record of any interaction you have had with our staff. Please get in touch. We do have a robust over the phone referencing process within our lettings division, so we are really sorry if you have not passed this process and perhaps that is why you have reviewed us negatively? Please do get in contact so we can discuss your experience 01525 371997 - Thomas.mccormick@mandmproperties.co.uk